Friday, June 30th, 2006. Today was our nephew Jesse's last day visiting us. We'll miss having Jesse around, he certainly made things fun around the house. Tomorrow we take him home to his mother Sherri, who is making her recovery at home in Prince George, Virginia. We return Sunday with our nephew Jimmy from Colonial Heights, Virginia. Jimmy spent two weeks with us two summers ago and we are looking forward to him staying with us for two weeks again this summer.
We are not looking forward to this weekend however. It will be our last trip to Sue's house. We will leave it empty on Sunday. A new family will begin moving in later next week. After making over a hundred trips home with Amy during the ten years I've know her, it's difficult thinking that this will be the last. I still remember the first time I walked in that door. I met Amy while she was attending Virginia Tech, just a month before her Spring semester ended. Amy moved back home for the summer to work and attend summer school at a local community college. I made the 250 mile drive a few weeks later to see Amy and to meet her family. I remember that when I walked in the house, Sue was standing in the kitchen making green beans for Jimmy's first birthday party. I was nervous as I walked into the kitchen, but as soon as I was close enough, Sue reached up and gave me a great big tight hug. From that moment on, I was never, not even for a minute, uncomfortable there. Sue and I shared a football bond and sat in her living room yelling at the television during countless games. I take some of the credit for introducing NASCAR to Sue. She immediately became a Dale Earnhardt fan and mourned his loss a few years later, cheering heavily for Dale Jr. after that. His tattered flag was still waving beside her house months after she passed away. I remember that while visiting over Christmas once, I wanted to take Amy to Richmond during a snowstorm. It was the only time I recall Sue and I getting mad at each other. Sue didn't think we should leave, but I was stubborn and didn't want a little snow to de-rail whatever plans we had that night. I had left my truck warming up in the driveway. When we went out to get in it, I found that it had rolled down the driveway and into Sue's shed, putting a big dent in my fender. As I stood there looking at my wrecked truck, covered with the snow that kept falling, I just had to laugh, then go inside and admit defeat. Sue was right, it wasn't a night to be on the road. So while I have my own memories, Amy will have so many more to miss. The house was completed while her father was in the hospital with Melanoma and it's the house he came home to before he died. Amy was fourteen when her father died. She was also ten years younger than her closest sibling, so for most of the years following that, it was just Amy and her mother in that house on School Avenue. After Amy moved to Blacksburg at eighteen to go to college and to Mount Airy at twenty-six when we married, 115 School Avenue was her destination whenever she 'went home.' In the years to come, we will visit family and friends in the area and will enjoy those visits, but it won't be anything like 'going home.'. I'm sure the next week will be not only a busy one for Amy's family, but an emotional one as well. We have borrowed my dad's Suburban, rented a U-Haul trailer and will start our last trip to School Avenue at the break of dawn tomorrow morning.
